Clooney heads up likable comedy

In theaters

LEATHERHEADS, directed by George Clooney, written by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly, 113 minutes, rated PG-13.

In the wake of “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” and now the new George Clooney movie “Leatherheads,” there’s the sense that history might be repeating itself. Both films are revisionist screwball comedies that work hard to capture the look and feel of another time while also reflecting elements of our own time.

Given the current mood of the country and how it has been dampened by the state of the economy and the war abroad, Hollywood appears to be on the verge of returning to a period when movies offered such zippy, Depression-era entertainments as “Twentieth Century,” “It Happened One Night,” “Bringing Up Baby” and “His Girl Friday.”

In theory, this isn’t a bad idea, but Hollywood still might want to rethink it. What “Pettigrew” and “Leatherheads” underscore is the challenge of taking yesterday’s period comedies and updating them for today’s audiences. In each case, sometimes the movie works (usually when the farce is muted), and other times, it just feels forced (usually when the farce is amplified).

From a script by Sports Illustrated reporters Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly, “Leatherheads” is set in 1925, around the time when professional football was starting to take hold. This is Clooney’s third film as a director, and what it suggests is that he’s a good student – in this case, one who apparently took notes while shooting 2000’s “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” with the Coen brothers.

Like that movie, “Leatherheads” has a similar off-beat charm and it’s shot with the same rich honey tones. The one notable flash of color is its female lead, the very blond and red-lipsticked Renee Zellweger, whose Lexie Littleton, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, is charged to seek out the truth about Carter “The Bullet” Rutherford (John Krasinski), Princeton’s star football player who may or may not be the former war hero he claims to be.

It’s while Lexie is researching Rutherford’s past that she connects with Clooney’s Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly, who is the captain of the Duluth Bulldogs, a scrappy football team made up mostly of blue-collar men happy to be earning a modest living while playing the sport they love.

Intent on lifting their exposure to the collegiate level, where upwards of 40,000 fans gather for each game, Dodge meets with Rutherford and his sleazy agent, C.C. Frazier (Jonathan Pryce), in an effort to convince Rutherford to join their team. For a steep price, Rutherford agrees to do so – and ticket sales soar. Meanwhile, a romantic triangle develops among Lexie, Rutherford and Dodge that can only end in the two men coming to fisticuffs while Lexie must face the ramifications of getting her story.

The film’s premise is familiar but promising, so much so that you wish Howard Hawks had been alive to navigate those scenes in which the movie lurches unsuccessfully into slapstick. With all the mugging taking place, Clooney himself nearly gets mugged – he’s a director more suited for drama (“Michael Clayton,” “Good Night, and Good Luck”) than he is for comedy. That said, the film’s cast is strong, the script is likable and Clooney does have chemistry with Zellweger, who once again shines in a period piece. Along with Krasinski and Pryce, she proves invaluable in helping Clooney turn “Leatherheads” into a reasonably good time at the movies.

Grade: B-

On DVD

THERE WILL BE BLOOD, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, 156 minutes, rated R.

The best performance of Daniel Day-Lewis’ career turns out to be in the best movie of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career, a nice slice of symmetry that gets even better when you consider that so far, the actor and director have achieved their personal peaks in one of 2007’s best films.

Thick with mustache and armed with enough greed and hate to ruin a country, never mind a town, Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview comes to the oil-rich town of Little Boston with his son H.W. (Dillon Freasier) at his side.

He’s there to beat Standard Oil at their own game and buy up as much land as he can. Meanwhile, he finds in Little Boston an unexpected adversary in Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a Bible-thumping evangelist who sees in the good book what Plainview sees in oil – absolute power over the people.

Together, these two are pitted against each other in ways that make for stirring, dangerous entertainment, with each actor railing off the other and giving terrific performances in the process.

This is especially true for Day-Lewis, whose unshakable performance won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. His Plainview can be devastatingly cruel and kind in one brushstroke. We watch him with a sense of trepidation and fascination. In this way, he literally is the face of the emerging West.

In all the dirt and suffering that surround Plainview, a groundswell of promise nevertheless bubbles beneath his feet. Blood will be spilled to realize that promise – an element that gives the film its sharp connection to the present – but in this do-or-die business of creating a secure new culture, the pull of that promise is enough to tip those who seek it into madness. Just as it is now.

Grade: A

WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, video podcasts, iTunes portal and archive of hundreds of movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.